Hochul Wants to Raise Taxes on NYC Second Homes Worth Over $5 Million
“If you can afford a $5 million second home that sits empty most of the year, you can afford to contribute like every other New Yorker.”
You want more rich people to leave New York City? This is how you do it.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to raise taxes on second homes in New York City worth more than $5 million. From The New York Times:
The exact cost of the surcharge has not yet been ironed out, but the governor hopes to raise $500 million annually that would be used to address New York City’s deficit, estimated at $5.4 billion through the next fiscal year.
“New York City is the greatest city in the world, and the people who call it home should not be left carrying the burden alone,” Ms. Hochul said in a written statement. “If you can afford a $5 million second home that sits empty most of the year, you can afford to contribute like every other New Yorker.”
Aides to Ms. Hochul said that the surcharge would potentially involve a sliding scale, with properties of higher value being taxed at a higher rate. The governor intends to include the surcharge in the state’s multibillion-dollar budget, which was due April 1 and is still being negotiated with state legislative leaders.
$500 million for a $5.4 billion deficit. That’s around 11%, right? Sounds like it won’t even make a dent.
In 2023, the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey discovered that people use 59,000 units for “seasonal, recreational, or occasional use.”
That sounds like a lot of units, right?
Well, NYC had 102,900 in 2021. That’s a huge drop!
But sources didn’t even put the number of homes affected by the new tax close to the number of unused homes.
They claim the tax would hit around 13,000 homes.
The tax would go higher for homes worth more than $15 million. Those worth $25 million would get another bump.
How about a dose of reality?
“This annual tax will weaken the city’s broader economy — all without addressing its fiscal problems in the first place. Its impact will reach far beyond a small group of owners,” said Real Estate Board of New York President James Whelan. “It will not raise the amount of revenue expected, will lower property values and raise costs. Albany should focus on policies that encourage investment and housing production to create a more affordable city, not ones that stifle its growth.”
You know what helps bring down deficits? Cutting spending. Stop spending!
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled plans for the first of five city-owned grocery stores, to be built at a cost of $30 million.
The city budgeted $70 million for five stores, and yet one store costs $30 million. If the other four cost that much, the budget will have to increase by $80 million to reach $150 million.
How about using that money to address the budget gap?
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Comments
How about this – cut spending.
There is so much waste and fraud, that we could trim 90% of the budget upstate and down and improve citizen services.
Politicians do not know how to cut spending and this is both parties. Dems spend the most and tax the most.
They know, they just don’t to give up the taxpayer funding for their campaign. Then the bribe money can be all theirs to enjoy a second $5 million dollar house outside of new york.
Such a novel idea!! But of course that would mean cutting the grift the politicians use the spending for to stay in office.
Cutting spending means a reduction in the fraudulent redistribution of wealth that the leftist D’s are so addicted to that they would rather start a Civil War than give it up.
Your terms are acceptable.
Having been elected twice, and having been a treasurer of a municipal district here in Oregon, my take is that you are seriously understating the problem. The idea that there might be some grift, or extra spending, does not even occur to many people. There is no concept of “less” or “sufficient” spending, or even for legislation for any particular purpose. A shocking number of elected officials derive great pleasure from the act of spending without regard to any particular purpose of the spending. Spending less of the taxpayers’ money — or even considering spending less — is deeply offensive or even inconceivable. We elect far too many people with this form of mental illness.
The DemoncRat playbook is spend and spend, tax and tax. It would be an excommunicating offense to transgress the playbook.
“How about this – cut spending.”
I prefer raise taxes. It does three things:
1. Serves the voters right
2. Taxes Democrats the most
3. Makes me laugh
“you can afford to contribute like every other* New Yorker”
_____
*All those living on taxpayer largesse excluded.
Yeah, I’m a little confused by the proposal. My first impression is that rich people who have a second home in NYC are people whose first homes are NOT in NYC. Maybe because I can’t imagine a sane person keeping a seasonal home in the same polity as a primary home (it’s not like having a mountain cabin or a lake house). This implies that they are NOT primary residents of NYC. The city can jack up the taxes on that house, but can’t levy these people any other way.* They can chase the owners out of the city, but only to the part-time extent that they visited it. So it’s not as if these rich people will be forced to move to Florida or whatever — they already have a primary residence somewhere other than the city.
*Or do I recall that NYC claims the ability to levy income tax on you proportionally to the time you spend inside the city, regardless of the location of your primary residence or your employer’s location? If that’s so, they’re really shooting themselves in the foot.
“New York City is the greatest city in the world…”
I used to believe that,
You are seeing Atlas Shrugged play out right before our very eyes.
So many great songs about that formerly great city.
Manhattan Serenade
New,York on Sunday
Autumn in New York
Zohran The Knife.
Then its sliding down slippery slope. Every election the tax will get broadened.
So it’s back to taxes as ‘contribute’ again? They are simply trying so solve their own problems by ‘pushing a string’.
Gov Hochul proclaims that ‘NYC is the greatest city in the world and the people who call it home shouldn’t be left carrying the burden (of paying for it) alone’.
How about instead y’all refer to the NY Daily News headline summarizing President Ford’s response to NYC begging for outside funding in ’75; ‘Drop Dead’.
tbf, people with a second home in New Yorkistan (vs Palm Beach) are kinda dumb and deserve what they get.
Robbing Peter to pay Jose and Muhammad. Yeah that’ll work.
Easy solution. Either you make the NYC property your primary residence, you buy a second home valued at less than $5 million, or you move out of NYC entirely. I thought about turning your more than $5 million home into a short-term rental, but those are probably outlawed.
Hochul wants to raise $500 million for Mamdani.
Backwards thinking.
Second homes occupied less than full time consume less services per property taxes paid.
For example, their children are not attending the public schools.
For some, purchasing the second property may be less expensive than renting a hotel room for those who frequently visit NYC.
Taxing the rich more because you can just drives the rich to invest in property elsewhere.
Cutting overhead by reducing non-essential government spending and eliminating deficit spending is the way to solve this problem.
I guess they feel they haven’t done quite enough to chase all of the productive people out yet.
“Gov Hochul proclaims that ‘NYC is the greatest city in the world and the people who call it home shouldn’t be left carrying the burden (of paying for it) alone’.”
Nope, sounds like they already decided that having productive people is valueless.
“New York City is the greatest city in the world.”
Not even close to being objectively true. It’s a 💩 hole full of obnoxious, rude and overbearing people. If by chance you cannot stand Donald Trump it’s not because he’s Donald Trump it’s because he’s a New Yorker. There are millions just like him.
I used to want to visit NYC. But now I view it like Beijing or Moscow. A third world communist dictatorship where they may imprison you just for being American.
NYC has always been a shithole. I visited it a number of times, my first being at age 11 for a music competition. I saw the store-wide roll-down gate/shields on the front of every business on the hotel block — something I had never seen before, even on TV — and felt like I had traveled to some sort of open-air prison in which the pedestrians were expected to be animals, and the solution wasn’t to control the animals but to force the shopkeepers to protect themselves.
As Hank Williams JR sang;
‘If Heaven ain’t a lot like Dixie
I don’t wanna go
If they ain’t got a Grand Ole Opry
Like they do in Tennessee
Then send me to hell or NYC
It’d be about the same to me’
Given how I feel about cities — all cities — “greatest city in the world” is like being enthusiastic about a dental procedure.
Geez, not even a consideration that a comfy house bought years ago but with appreciation/inflation could easily be worth many times more than originally. Kind of like blaming mom and pop landlords for needing to raise rent because the property taxes are sky-high?
I confess my ignorance of the NY real estate business. Is that hole pictured at the top of the article exemplary of. a $5 million dollar property? If I had $5million, I think I might consider other properties. No, make that, I would consider other properties.
I am totally baffled by this statement.
Someone who has two homes is paying the same tax rate as everyone else in the taxing district.
If anything, the fact that a second home does not qualify for a homestead exemption means the property owner is actually paying more for the second home.
This is either “new math,” the governor not understanding how taxes work, or just another effort to cause strife and conflict based on envy and greed between citizens.
Or maybe all three.
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